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So my friend told me this:

温室で死ぬ時が来た

I understand that the translation means "It's time to die in the greenhouse", but I don't understand the 「死ぬ時」 part of the sentence.

What kind of structure is this?

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This is a relative clause. You might translate it as "The time has come, where (I) die in the greenhouse" or "The time to [die in the greenhouse] has come".

It's split up the following way:

温室で死ぬ - die in the greenhouse
時が来た - time has come

Literally "Die-in-the-greenhouse time has come".

English has signal words that introduce a relative clause, whereas Japanese does not. It's just a normal sentence directly in front of a noun.

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  • Thanks a lot, its kind of confusing without of the indication marks :L
    – Mavain
    Commented Jul 18, 2015 at 0:50
  • @Mavain: Yeah, relative clauses like this where also one of my major stumbling points in the beginning. You get used to them after a while though, I found.
    – Xeo
    Commented Jul 18, 2015 at 6:07

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